Here's An Attaboy

I am remiss. I should have posted this already last week, but I was running into MIS problems with work so was keeping a low profile.

One of the few people in Blogtopia (© Skippy) who actually gets my jokes, and since she's happily married I know she's not fawning when she laughs, Madeleine Begun Kane (you can find her in my blogroll) has won the 2008 Robert Benchley Society Award for Humor.

She has some interesting things to say about it all, including a copy of the missive she received-- genuine and direct-- from the selector (I leave that surprise for you to uncover).

Robert Benchley...what can be said about him that Dorothy Parker wouldn't mock as pretentious droolings of an inferior mind, a steak to my veggie burger. He is a writer I admired growing up for his wit and inexorably attractive fashion of drawing you in for the sucker punch.

A charter member of the Algonquin Round Table, one could argue that Benchley's membership in that esteemed body (apparently he steamed many bodies there) sealed his fate as not only a raconteur but as an influence for comedians as diverse as Dave Barry...OK, it's a stretch...to James Thurber.

He was, in short, his generation's James Wolcott.

Ah wit! All is vanity, fair.

Congratulations, Ms. Kane.

PS Does this get me back on the barbecue list?